Gieß den Kiez
Format Action Gardening Mapping
City Berlin, Germany
Let’s join forces for a green city! Our city trees are more than stressed out - Increasing temperatures, decreasing rainfalls and salt on the street during winter are keeping our giant green friends in Berlin challenged. Since city trees provide not only cool shadows in the summer, but clean our air and provide a home for thousands of animals and other plants, we built a platform to let authorities, volunteers & civic society collaborate to save our trees from dehydration: "Gieß den Kiez“ was born. The map of Gieß den Kiez visualizes over 625.000 city trees of Berlin, showing their species, age, water demand and the rainfalls received within the last 30 days. Users can adopt trees and even water them virtually to show other tree lovers what’s going on in their Kiez. It invites all locals to participate in the irrigation & nursing of city trees. Everything is fully open source and uses open data from the city authorities, the German weather service and Open Street Map. We love openness & invite everybody to join the movement by forking our GitHub Repository.
Location Check out the city trees in your neighborhood
The platform is based on an interactive map, where you can discover the variety of over 625.000 city trees of Berlin. Simply drag and zoom around, active water pumps layers & rainfalls layers to find your most beloved tree and check out its age, species and water demands. Your tree is endangered? No problem! You can even create an account to adopt it in the app. With adopting and watering the tree, you can show the city's greenery department and other tree lovers that you are taking care voluntarily.
People Power Get in touch
There is a public Slack channel for exchange with other interested people. Get in touch, find water groups in your Kiez or send us (CityLAB Berlin) feedback for further releases of the web application. This Slack channel helps us to develop even better prototypes for the city of tomorrow and fosters citizen engagement. Of course, other community members are happy if you take some nice photos or share your anecdotes with them!
People Power Make it your tool
We invite our tech-savvy friends to take a look at the source code in our Github Repository and help the platform grow in your neighborhood. If you’re interested in redeploying "Gieß den Kiez" in your city, don’t hesitate to reach out - the code is there to be shared and we are happy to help you with the very first steps. Follow the city of Leipzig: They have already been brave and will launch their very own “Leipzig Gießt”.
Make it your tool II
If programming isn’t your favorite activity, we recommend to reach out to your local OpenData / CivicTech / OpenKnowledge -institutions or public innovation labs and tell them about your idea. The recording of a step-by-step online-workshop detailing all you need to know to adapt the tool was recorded and made available through our website. The main focus lies on organizing your neighbours and friends to water trees together and document the process with the tool. It’s nice to meet others while doing so - and it supports your city's administration in keeping the city trees green and alive.
